TASSIE BY MARTIN JARRIE

MAYNARD'S MERKIN VINEYARDS OSTERIA

Jennifer and Maynard James Keenan have taken their biggest, most public plunge yet to encourage the developing premium food and wine culture in their beloved Arizona.

Their wild frontier high dry desert vineyard on what Maynard dubbed Mount Mingus, at Jerome Az, is one thing; their new Merkin Vineyards Osteria in Cottonwood pushes it in a helluva lot deeper. Take a stroll through that website. Anybody got a Gulf Stream idle?

Those'll be Mrs Keenan's highly-tuned squashers under the illos; here's me getting a bit of a squeeze last time Tool hit town ... such prestigious winemaker events are a perfect opportunity to get the Barossa Baronial robes and kit out, in all due respect:

the whiteman skin doesn't take too well to the brilliant laser light of a Tool show ... Maynard wisely stood in the dark all night way at the back of the stage,  just a silhouette ... it coulda been somebody else doing a Maria ventro trick but that sweet voice gave him away ... 

I reckon we all woulda still heard him and Danny going for it when the electricity went off ... not to mention him doing the entire show with his left arm extended at right angles to his bod, with a stuffed chook perched on his wrist. To this hillbilly, in the dark it looked like a Rhode Island Red ... 

It was a fucking A-Mazing night. Best laser show I've seen, flicking like a whip around one king hell zappo whup band from the magma. For once the maze fell shattered like a windscreen.

Dusted with heavenly pepper.

Below, the man holds the red he made with Taras Ochota whilst toughening the Toolbox larynx with a brace of Cubans ... we went to dinner the night before the last Adelaide Tool gig  and something terrible happened to that cast iron voicebox ... the sellout show at the Entertainment Centre was postponed for 24 hours while whitecoats did all kindsa voodoo round the royal froat and ten thousand  Tool fans ate every duck in an unsuspecting Chinatown ... village chat blamed the voice damage on me, but I joked about it being the Grenache ... Mick Jagger was the next famous voice to get into Ochota Grenache and at impossible odds his voice closed down so bad next day the entire Stones show in Melbourne wasn't only postponed; it was cancelled ... 

I've never heard of such impossibly freakly stuff happening to anybody but those two famous throats ... I mean mine was alright ... maybe the Adelaide water causes the trouble, only in the finest-tuned visiting Lamborghini larynxes ...

and then they don't drink enough Ochota/MJK Grenache - any good Hills or McLaren Vale Grenache - to do a proper healing job of it.

I have asked Lord Twining's ghost to prepare me an alchemic report.

Bacchus'll know the correct dose for assuagement. Maybe they'll have to make more.

anyway, get your peculiar behind into a seat at the Merkin Osteria as soon as you can and eat something really fresh and healthy with any of Maynard's beautiful wines ... 

the MJKs will be here later in the month with Puscifer on their Money Shot Tour Round Under so devour tickets and go boogie before Peter Gago breaks that chook arm in another hissy Adelaide wine spat and/or Maynard disappears into another vintage round under.

these two photos (in Peter Gago's offices in the old Penfold-Hyland headquarters at Penfolds Magill Estate) by Milton Wordley, all others by Maynard or Jennifer

proud winemaker with big new oaks in The Bunker at Jerome ... and here's another one by Milton: Puscifer gig in Columbus Ohio, July 2012 ... from our book A year in the life of Grange ... Maynard's singing into the back of the screen 

HAVE A DRINK FOR CHRISSAKE

Virgin and Child - Dieric Bouts 1415 - 1475 Netherlands - publicity shot

MOON, WINE, SEX, FIRE, THEFT, DEATH

photos by Philip White

RECORKING CLINIC BY GEORGE

RICK ROBERTSON OF CLARE JULY 1982

In the winter of 1982, the stubbornly disorganised Clare Valley Winemakers surprised me by electing the zany, very clever Rick Robertson to its presidency. Many much more famous folk have held the position since, but I shall always regard dear Rick as the father of the modern Clare wine business. I visited him in July of that year for this interview, which I published in Winestate magazine's fiftieth edition the following month: 

If you drive north toward Clare, and you somehow manage to get past Auburn Cellars and Crabtree's and Quelltaler and the fabulous Martindale Hall, and then you take a very easy downhill turn to the right, across the train tracks, and then manage to squeeze past the new Brice Hill restaurant without being tripped over by a glass or barrel of Clare Valley wine, you may find yourself in one of the world's more unusual wineries. Ricko's. Rick Robertson's.

On the first visit, this freckled, tousle-headed Kookaburra fetishist will sit you down and ply you with wine and conversation. On the second visit, he'll probably kiss you. Then Hamish, his kid, will come out and kiss you. And Emma, his cat, will sidle by, arrogant brown-eye to the sky, carrying some vital invisible pheromone from A to B. O'Toole the elderly Irish setter could well baptise you with a few globs, and if you're especially lucky, Pepe, Rick's partner, might be there too.

Then, if things aren't too busy, which is rare, and you're a writer, you might be able to get Ricko to talk into a microphone. Like this time, very early on Sunday morning, before the Clare main street turns into a ten minute traffic jam of churchgoers, but after Ricko's had his breakfast and first refreshments for the day. 

PW: Well Sir, how did all this get started?

RR: Well Sir, I played some wine games a long time ago. Then I went to Roseworthy in '75 and '76. In '77 I felt sort of commercial, so I built half of that shed. In '78 I built the other half.  I think it was '80 when I did the balcony, and this bit. That's my little tin shed. My Château Lysaght.

I started Watervale Cellars, which is the absolute opposite end of the spectrum. And Auburn Cellars. I mean, I saw the Temperance Hall for sale, and I couldn't miss that, could I? I mean, it was screaming for me, for help. It's a fortifieds fortress now, rather than a Temperance Hall. A cellar-door place. I sold it to Kevin Symons, and he's doing very well. Then Robert Crabtree came along, and I decided to sell Watervale, for several reasons, including dosh. We formed a new company, and we got half each. But now I want to develop this one. I've done that other stuff.

In the day of the malignant new Colorbond rash, Ricko loved his traditional Lysaght galvo. These are his tanks ... for rain ... photos Philip White

 

You know, I always said that if I ever hit thirty, I'd probably hit forty, so I'll probably be alright. I've crossed that one. It's really simple. But I really have to start doing it now. I want to get into this place, and get it off. 

But why the wine industry? 

I'm in the wine industry because I like drinking, actually. I reckon I'm pretty representative of the heavy boozing section of the community. You know, I adore lunches. I prefer a lunch to a dinner. I think lunch is more convenient. You get a longer time to sleep. That's how it all evolved. That's what I'm like.

I adore wine. Every time I look, that's the catalyst. Things revolve around it. We treat it as if it has this aura, and wonderful mystique, which is splendid. But it's just a drink, and it'll never be anything more than wine. It's a mood. It's like art.

Auburn Temperance Hall, 1982

And I really like people. You can do so much. You can express yourself, and meet interesting people. You can eat and you can have a few drinks along the way. Things like that.

I'm really imaginative too, thank Christ. 

What do you imagine for Clare? 

Ah, you know, not many Australian wineries take advantage of the air like this, the view. Like we're sitting out here. It's all get-em-all-inside-and-put-the-hard-word-on-em: you know, drink. Now buy. Hard sell. That's just a product of the 'fifties. I find that fascinating.

But you know, just look around! We're an hour-and-a-half from town, and we can sit out here and breathe. That's what Clare wine is, sitting here doing this. Having a good time. Being a person in a nice way. It doesn't have to be as serious as everyone wanting to make a trockenbeerenauslese and all that stuff.

See, we're sitting here in this idyllic spot, and who's heard about it? And all the fruit's been going past, out of this valley into every other bloke's wine for years and years. The area's survived by that selling to Lindeman's and Seppelts and Blassie and Penfolds, and those companies have done well out of the area.

But we've been pretty bloody naive. No-one's had the guts to get up and say "This is it!"

No cigarette labels in my book. This is Clare. That other stuff's crap. This area deserves to be recognised for what it is, and in my small way I want it to have an identity. 

What about your wines? 

Oh, there's this beautiful Riesling named after the cat. It's called White Emma. Then I've got a few old whites - I like some age on my whites. And I've still got some stuff tucked away that'll be absolutely unreal, you know, some big monster reds. And some other stuff that I also adore. Then there's this nice Grenache for drinking out here.

I'm in the wine industry 
because I like drinking 
actually ... I reckon I'm 
pretty representative of  
the heavy boozing section


It's not as crazy as it all sounds, but it's simply limited resources. If I happen to have Semillon there and Clare Riesling (which is our name for Crouchen) there, that's how it happens. Nothing other than that. See, if I've always bought Grenache from someone, and they want to sell some, I'll buy it, and that's how this Grenache evolved. It was simply availability.  That's pretty simple.

See, I don't mind if people say this is shocking. I don't mind. Whatever they like. At least they've thought about it, and that's all you can ask. When people are doing that, and just being able to breathe and think and walk about without any razzamatazz that we impose on them then the wine industry will really win. 

I believe that very intensely. I really do. 

What should be on a wine label? 

Paintings! I think labelling's very important. Instead of standardising everything we ... I mean it's dull! Who needs it? We need some colour! 

And you blokes, you writers, you say "that wine's terrible." You're obsessed with standardisation. I'd love it if more people came to see it as a mood. I mean a mood, and not a gold-embossed con! You know, these cigarette-type labels. People must look and think for themselves.

Well, you know, I'm just anti-standardisation. That's it exactly. And you writers haven't helped much yet either.

Remember: this stuff's a bloody drink! 

Which leads us to wine shows. Your ideas on standardisation would seem to clash with the basic premise of most wine shows. 

Ahhhh! Bloody wine shows! We've always gotta judge our wines against someone else's. You know, twenty wine judges, and let's squeeze all these wines into all these categories we've worked out, eh?

We seem to be a very insular and introverted country - we always wait to follow somebody else.

Bloody wine shows. We've always got to compare our wines to those from another area. You tell me why. The Italians would go down with heart attack if Chianti was compared to Piedmontese wines. Or Burgundy to Bordeaux for that matter. I'm certainly not modelling my winemaking ideas on Europe.

I dunno, but the idea is I'm trying to make ... trying to find another direction. It's as simple as that. It's not radical. It's seeing people, and how they operate, and here comes the light Grenache with a painting on the side. Enough of the heavy monsters! Why don't we try and establish our own standard? 

But don't we need some sort of competition or show? 

You need to get up here for the Donnybrook Wine Show. You can be a judge. See that gate down there? That's Donnybrook. That's our railway station. That bit of a fence down there. Well I think it's time for the Donnybrook Wine Show. You know, it's hardly an Anders Ousbach sort of thing, but we'd all sit down there by the fence, invite various judges along, and there'll be one Robertson wine per class, and we'll give a medal for each class, and there'll be no denials, no trouble, and no comparisons.

Now this is gonna upset some people, but if it's done properly, it won't matter.

We've gotta learn to laugh at ourselves.

That's something we tend to be reluctant to do.

Hamish Roberston's shoes. Like most little kids, Hamish found Philip a very tricky word to pronounce, so he called me Fillets, one of the many nicknames which have stuck.

EDVARD MUNCH: CONSUMPTIVE INSANITY

Forty five troubled years after he painted his famous The Scream, the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch had resorted to one age-old method of herding - or hiding from - his demons.

"My father was temperamentally nervous and obsessively religious," he wrote, "to the point of psychoneurosis. From him I inherited the seeds of madness. The angels of fear, sorrow, and death stood by my side since the day I was born ..." And furthermore: "I inherited two of mankind's most frightful enemies - the heritage of consumption and insanity."

The painting is Self Portrait With Bottles (1938)